Hey, maybe they're getting ready to tell the world that this kind of thing wouldn't happen if the entire Internet ran on Active Directory (tm) instead of ordinary DNS!
(Moderators: it's a joke. Put yer flamebait points away.)
--
My only concern, albeit a small one, is that of Java applets in web pages. Maybe it's not the ideal environment, but currently it's the only reasonably cross-platform, cross-browser way to deliver client-side executable content that's too complex to do in JavaScript. What will happen when Internet Exploder no longer has Java support? Webmasters will have a choice: force IE users to download a Sun Java plug-in, or write the applet in C# and only support IE7 (or whatever) users. That sounds quite forboding if you're a fan of non-Microsoft desktops.
I truly hope that this scenario never comes to pass. It won't, if AOL gets on the ball and switches its AOLclient to use Mozilla as the browser. Let's hope this happens soon. --
I find it interesting that everyone here is assuming that the "90 percent" figure quoted is correct. My experience (on neutral, non-technology sites) has been that the number is closer to 65%, with the curve beginning to flatten out. --
Who would Microsoft's "peers" be? Hmmm... how about other software companies? That jury could have folks on it like Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison, James Barksdale... after all, these folks are in the business and know all about how a software company ought to be treated, right?
Hey, we can dream... (grin)
--
...I was looking forward to new screensavers based on things that showed up in the Matrix sequel! Now where is all that creative energy going to come from? --
Fortunately, two decades of ordinary VCR's will prevent The Industry from putting an end to time shifting. Consumers have gotten used to the idea.
The bottom line on this kind of stuff is that consumers will eventually win. The free market demands it. From a technology perspective, bulletproof copy protection is impossible. Every single attempt has been defeated. From the errors on Track 40 of a Commodore-64 floppy (and the copy programs that put those errors on the duplicate), to Macrovision on VHS (and the sync repeaters that worked around it), to CSS (and DeCSS), technology has proven time and again that you can't give a consumer access to some sort of media and completely lock out the ability to copy it. The only sure-fire way to prevent copying is to deliver all pay-per-view programming with an accompanying lawyer, policeman, or whatever in the consumer's living room. And that ain't gonna happen.
Big Media scumbags tried to prevent the consumer public from gaining access to cassette recorders, and later VCR's. Why should this round be any different? --
This would be great for embedded systems where you need to trim the memory footprint down a little bit. For a general-purpose desktop computer, X11 is the way to go, because it's capable of running multiple toolkits, network transparency, direct rendering, and a bunch of other stuff - all at the same time.
But what if you're building the next Tivo? An embedded Linux system, on which you control the application software which will be delivered, doesn't need that stuff. GTK+ directly to the framebuffer removes some of the guesswork (indeed, with VESA it removes nearly all of it) and would bring about a lower memory footprint and faster time-to-market, while still allowing the developers to prototype the app software on regular GTK+ running on X11.
What people *do* have is laptops/notebooks. Now, if Starbucks offered a 100 MHz local net with RJ45 connectors along the counter...
Yes! Someone gets it!
That's exactly what is needed. Y'wanna cater to the masses, you implement the common denominator. 10/100 switched Ethernet, TCP/IP, and DHCP. Plug it in and go. That's how hotels do it, and that's how offices with "guest desks" for visiting execs do it.
This is part of the concept that Sun called 'WebTone' -- a set of commonly-available Internet standards that are as readily accessible as your typical POTS dial tone. (Microsoft countered with a 'WinTone' concept which quickly got laughed off by the industry.)
I'll gladly plug my laptop into an Ethernet jack at the coffee shop. I'll gladly pay a few bucks extra to hang out on the 'net while I drink my coffee. But I won't hook up to some bizarre wireless network, especially one controlled by the Devil of Redmond. --
As wacky as this might sound, the XBox might turn out to be a great opportunity for Linux gaming. Since all XBoxes will contain the same hardware, it's a cinch to put together a bootable Linux CD that has everything pre-configured for the known devices in the box. Load that puppy up with NVidia (or whatever) drivers, the sound drivers for whatever audio is in there, and lots of pre-configured settings, and you've got a Linux-based skeleton upon which games could be written.
Since I'm not a gamer, I have other ideas. If I didn't strongly object to giving $$$ to the evil empire, I'd pick one of these things up, load Linux on it, and use it as a home multimedia terminal connected both to my LAN and to the television and stereo. View web pages on the TV, play MP3's off the server, pick up streaming audio, control the lights in the house via X-10... geek heaven!
And just think -- with XFree86 running on it, it'd be a real X-Box! --
Y'know, this might be just the thing for embedded systems. Depending on how robust it turns out to be, the combination of the Pliant userland and the Linux kernel seems like a great way to build simple, network-aware, embeddable systems without a great deal of unnecessary complexity. --
if the main payload isn't heavy enough (almost always the case) you either load hitch-hikers or you load ballast
Oooh! How much weight are we talking about, here? In the hundreds, or perhaps thousands of pounds? I know that amateur satellite stuff is important, but shouldn't it be a higher priority to launch Steve Ballmer into space? We could strap him to an Ariane 5 as extra dead weight, and then after the regular payload is deployed, the rocket could continue on, hurling Mr. Ballmer into the sun. It would solve several problems:
Provide the correct amount of payload weight on the Ariane 5
Remove an unwanted pest from the Earth
Add a few thousand years' worth of fuel to our sun's life
I think the reason people have such a hard time defining and re-defining, and then trying to assess the success or failure of, the "Virtual Community" is because "Virtual Community" is such a vague term. We've had virtual communities for almost two decades, in one form or another.
I have been a BBS operator for nearly 13 years (click to log on). In that time I've seen a small virtual community form, grow, and thrive. It's a wonderful thing that I wouldn't trade for anything.
Slashdot itself is a virtual community, as well. Anywhere you put together a recurring group that interacts with one another, instead of just with the computer, you have a virtual community.
There are so many of them that you can't apply any generalizations to the term and expect realistic assessment. Just like physical communities, some of them thrive, some of them coast, and some of them fall apart. --
I find it both ironic and amusing that Slashdot has never posted a link to a BBSpot story before... but now, the day after a story entitled World's best tech humour site - and it still can't get on Slashdot appears in the news, Slashdot just happens to feature a BBSpot story.
One of the things that the Sun/StarOffice project is doing, is to create this "OpenOffice" set of standards, with the current StarOffice codebase being the reference implementation. The set of standard document formats you wish for is one of their specific goals. Formats rich enough to handle the needs of business documents, but open enough to be vendor-neutral. Initially, the OpenOffice formats will be implemented by both StarOffice (the open source office suite) and StarPortal (Sun's upcoming online version).
I think this would be a good place to start. To make it even more buzzword-compliant, the OpenOffice formats will be XML-based. I'd be very happy to see the OpenOffice formats adopted not only by Star/Sun, but also by Abi, Gnumeric, K-office... who knows, maybe someone could even write a plug-in for MS Office to load and save documents in OpenOffice format. (If it's successful enough, MS will eventually have to do it themselves.) --
Ok, admittedly this is not my strong point (I'm more of a server hacker) but, what kind of effort would be involved to get XFree to supply all of its available fonts, automatically, to GhostScript? It seems to me that if this could be done, all installed fonts would be available on both the screen and on the printer at the same time.
This would take us one step closer to desktop parity with Those Other desktop operating systems. --
I just checked out the December screenshots of Eazel, and continue to be amazed at how slick it looks. This is good software written by people who understand how to cater to the end user. No one can accuse Nautilus of having a "built by programmers" look.
Truly intuitive user interface, combined with intergration with StarOffice and Mozilla... it looks like we're going to see Linux sail past Windows in terms of plain old usability very soon. --
It's about time BT tried to enforce this patent. This is good news. Prodigy is a big company that can afford the legal resources to defend itself against this ridiculously absurd patent.
I expect that it'll be an easy case for Prodigy. And once Prodigy wins, the patent will be null and void. This is good for all of us, because it means that we can all go on our merry way developing and using web products. If BT had selected first target that didn't have the bucks to hire good lawyers, the case might have gone the other way.
Worst-case scenario? BT wins, Microsoft goes to BT for an exclusive license to their innovative hyperlinking technology, and all other developers effectively become legally barred from writing or publishing web software. (Ok, it's a stretch, but worst-case scenarios usually are.) --
It seems that every company that owns WordPerfect seems to tank. It's like Tolkien's Ring or something. First the WordPerfect Corporation itself, then Novell, now Corel.
Here's the sad story of a great application that suffered from a long string of bad management, unfair beatings from a big bad monopolist, and finally... competition from free software.
WordPerfect gives many of us a Warm Fuzzy. It's part of our collective history. But now we've got both StarOffice and KOffice for free, and open source... we might consider both WordPerfect and Corel to be simply the next fatality, the next commercial entity to get squashed by free software that is Just Better.
Mark Williams software (remember Coherent?) was the first. Microsoft will likely be the last. There's plenty of 'em in between -- WordPerfect is merely one of them. --
While I personally wouldn't touch a Microsoft-powered device with a ten foot pole, the one thing that I've noticed their users enjoy is multimedia support. People want to use their pocket computers to play MP3's, and even take dictation. This is something Palm OS needs in order to maintain its lead. --
IBM's virtual environment (VM-ESA) works without the aid of a "host operating system." In other words, if you want to load (for example) Linux/390 into one of your VM's, you don't have to have the VM running inside OS/390 (the operating system formerly known as MVS). The whole mainframe is virtualized by VM-ESA before you start getting into operating systems at all.
What would be involved in making something like this run on the x86 environment? Could, for example, a thin VM management layer run on the bottom, with Linux and Windows running in parallel, instead of one on top of the other as both plex86 and VMware do?
Or is the PC so badly designed that there's no hope of doing VM's without a host OS? --
It's about migration, pure and simple. Windows 3.1 ran DOS apps. Windows 95 ran Windows 3.1 apps. Windows NT runs all of them. Naturally, people aren't going to hold on to their old apps forever, but the option to run them has to be there.
I'd wager a guess that when the WINE project gets to the point where it can reliably run Win32 software at least as reliably as OS/2 ran Win16 software, without the need to install Microsoft DLL's, you'll start to see a shift. And why not? With a price tag of $0.00, it's attractive to both OEM's and large corporate installations.
Out-of-the-box working Windows emulation is what's necessary to begin the mass migration. Once that starts to happen in significant numbers, there won't be a single ISV foolish enough to remain only on Win32 and not produce Linux native versions of their apps. Slowly and steadily, Linux becomes the native environment for all apps. --
The public switched telephone network could benefit from variable-length dialing. Dial as much as you need to make the number unique; the rest should be considered "identical to your number."
You'd probably have to terminate all dialing with the # key or something to make it work. This would render rotary phones unusable, but how much longer can we really afford to keep supporting these relics? --
As someone else here said, there's an important difference between "revolutionary" and "visionary." You might call RMS the visionary and Linus the revolutionary. Linus didn't start out with the goal of writing a world-class operating system for the masses -- it was just a neat hack at the beginning. Stallman had that idea, though. The difference is that Linus went out and did what Stallman only talked about. As such, there is room in the world for both visionaries andrevolutionaries -- in fact, they're both necessary, and they have a symbiotic relationship. --
Right now, it's a rather awkward time to have a Motif-based app. The Linux desktop is, by and large, GTK and Qt based, and the biggest commercial apps for both Linux and Unix have either moved to one of the better toolkits (Netscape) or are in the process of going there (StarOffice). Even the venerable WordPerfect has switched from Motif to Winelib.
Motif apps are looking increasingly quaint and outmoded, and it wouldn't be terribly easy to move FrameMaker to a new toolkit. Adobe is one of the few software powerhouses that still has high-profile Motif apps out there. They're at a crossroads and they need to make some decisions. Abandon the Linux port of FrameMaker? Ok, but what about the Sun, HP, and IBM versions? They're still on Motif, even at a time when those vendors are moving to GNOME/GTK.
Adobe needs to either get up to speed with the new Linux/Unix desktop, or get out of the market. --
One problem with Microsoft is that they have enough well-paid corporate lawyers, and a big enough war chest, that they really do believe that they're invincible. They'll take GPL code if they want, and worry about the legal issues later.
No court would force Microsoft to open-source a GPL-tainted Windows, especially a conservative Supreme Court full of Bush nominees. They'd be much more likely to declare the GPL non-enforceable and declare code covered by it to be the legal equivalent of Public Domain. It's the Golden Rule, folks: whoever has the gold, makes the rules. Welcome to the Corporate Republic.
Now, do I think they've actually stolen any code? Of course not. Anyone who's written code for both Unix and Windows, and especially anyone who's had the unfortunate experience of having to port code from one to the other, knows that the architectures of these two systems are way too different for ported code to run efficiently. It's hard enough making ported code run at all. --
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, maybe they're getting ready to tell the world that this kind of thing wouldn't happen if the entire Internet ran on Active Directory (tm) instead of ordinary DNS! (Moderators: it's a joke. Put yer flamebait points away.)
--
My only concern, albeit a small one, is that of Java applets in web pages. Maybe it's not the ideal environment, but currently it's the only reasonably cross-platform, cross-browser way to deliver client-side executable content that's too complex to do in JavaScript. What will happen when Internet Exploder no longer has Java support? Webmasters will have a choice: force IE users to download a Sun Java plug-in, or write the applet in C# and only support IE7 (or whatever) users. That sounds quite forboding if you're a fan of non-Microsoft desktops.
I truly hope that this scenario never comes to pass. It won't, if AOL gets on the ball and switches its AOLclient to use Mozilla as the browser. Let's hope this happens soon.
--
I find it interesting that everyone here is assuming that the "90 percent" figure quoted is correct. My experience (on neutral, non-technology sites) has been that the number is closer to 65%, with the curve beginning to flatten out.
--
Who would Microsoft's "peers" be? Hmmm ... how about other software companies? That jury could have folks on it like Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison, James Barksdale... after all, these folks are in the business and know all about how a software company ought to be treated, right?
Hey, we can dream... (grin)
--
...I was looking forward to new screensavers based on things that showed up in the Matrix sequel! Now where is all that creative energy going to come from?
--
Fortunately, two decades of ordinary VCR's will prevent The Industry from putting an end to time shifting. Consumers have gotten used to the idea.
The bottom line on this kind of stuff is that consumers will eventually win. The free market demands it. From a technology perspective, bulletproof copy protection is impossible. Every single attempt has been defeated. From the errors on Track 40 of a Commodore-64 floppy (and the copy programs that put those errors on the duplicate), to Macrovision on VHS (and the sync repeaters that worked around it), to CSS (and DeCSS), technology has proven time and again that you can't give a consumer access to some sort of media and completely lock out the ability to copy it. The only sure-fire way to prevent copying is to deliver all pay-per-view programming with an accompanying lawyer, policeman, or whatever in the consumer's living room. And that ain't gonna happen.
Big Media scumbags tried to prevent the consumer public from gaining access to cassette recorders, and later VCR's. Why should this round be any different?
--
This would be great for embedded systems where you need to trim the memory footprint down a little bit. For a general-purpose desktop computer, X11 is the way to go, because it's capable of running multiple toolkits, network transparency, direct rendering, and a bunch of other stuff - all at the same time.
But what if you're building the next Tivo? An embedded Linux system, on which you control the application software which will be delivered, doesn't need that stuff. GTK+ directly to the framebuffer removes some of the guesswork (indeed, with VESA it removes nearly all of it) and would bring about a lower memory footprint and faster time-to-market, while still allowing the developers to prototype the app software on regular GTK+ running on X11.
Kudos to the innovative GTK developers.
--
That's exactly what is needed. Y'wanna cater to the masses, you implement the common denominator. 10/100 switched Ethernet, TCP/IP, and DHCP. Plug it in and go. That's how hotels do it, and that's how offices with "guest desks" for visiting execs do it.
This is part of the concept that Sun called 'WebTone' -- a set of commonly-available Internet standards that are as readily accessible as your typical POTS dial tone. (Microsoft countered with a 'WinTone' concept which quickly got laughed off by the industry.)
I'll gladly plug my laptop into an Ethernet jack at the coffee shop. I'll gladly pay a few bucks extra to hang out on the 'net while I drink my coffee. But I won't hook up to some bizarre wireless network, especially one controlled by the Devil of Redmond.
--
As wacky as this might sound, the XBox might turn out to be a great opportunity for Linux gaming. Since all XBoxes will contain the same hardware, it's a cinch to put together a bootable Linux CD that has everything pre-configured for the known devices in the box. Load that puppy up with NVidia (or whatever) drivers, the sound drivers for whatever audio is in there, and lots of pre-configured settings, and you've got a Linux-based skeleton upon which games could be written.
... geek heaven!
Since I'm not a gamer, I have other ideas. If I didn't strongly object to giving $$$ to the evil empire, I'd pick one of these things up, load Linux on it, and use it as a home multimedia terminal connected both to my LAN and to the television and stereo. View web pages on the TV, play MP3's off the server, pick up streaming audio, control the lights in the house via X-10
And just think -- with XFree86 running on it, it'd be a real X-Box!
--
Y'know, this might be just the thing for embedded systems. Depending on how robust it turns out to be, the combination of the Pliant userland and the Linux kernel seems like a great way to build simple, network-aware, embeddable systems without a great deal of unnecessary complexity.
--
--
I think the reason people have such a hard time defining and re-defining, and then trying to assess the success or failure of, the "Virtual Community" is because "Virtual Community" is such a vague term. We've had virtual communities for almost two decades, in one form or another.
I have been a BBS operator for nearly 13 years (click to log on). In that time I've seen a small virtual community form, grow, and thrive. It's a wonderful thing that I wouldn't trade for anything.
Slashdot itself is a virtual community, as well. Anywhere you put together a recurring group that interacts with one another, instead of just with the computer, you have a virtual community.
There are so many of them that you can't apply any generalizations to the term and expect realistic assessment. Just like physical communities, some of them thrive, some of them coast, and some of them fall apart.
--
I find it both ironic and amusing that Slashdot has never posted a link to a BBSpot story before... but now, the day after a story entitled World's best tech humour site - and it still can't get on Slashdot appears in the news, Slashdot just happens to feature a BBSpot story.
Journalistic irony? You decide.
--
One of the things that the Sun/StarOffice project is doing, is to create this "OpenOffice" set of standards, with the current StarOffice codebase being the reference implementation. The set of standard document formats you wish for is one of their specific goals. Formats rich enough to handle the needs of business documents, but open enough to be vendor-neutral. Initially, the OpenOffice formats will be implemented by both StarOffice (the open source office suite) and StarPortal (Sun's upcoming online version).
I think this would be a good place to start. To make it even more buzzword-compliant, the OpenOffice formats will be XML-based. I'd be very happy to see the OpenOffice formats adopted not only by Star/Sun, but also by Abi, Gnumeric, K-office... who knows, maybe someone could even write a plug-in for MS Office to load and save documents in OpenOffice format. (If it's successful enough, MS will eventually have to do it themselves.)
--
Ok, admittedly this is not my strong point (I'm more of a server hacker) but, what kind of effort would be involved to get XFree to supply all of its available fonts, automatically, to GhostScript? It seems to me that if this could be done, all installed fonts would be available on both the screen and on the printer at the same time.
This would take us one step closer to desktop parity with Those Other desktop operating systems.
--
I just checked out the December screenshots of Eazel, and continue to be amazed at how slick it looks. This is good software written by people who understand how to cater to the end user. No one can accuse Nautilus of having a "built by programmers" look.
... it looks like we're going to see Linux sail past Windows in terms of plain old usability very soon.
Truly intuitive user interface, combined with intergration with StarOffice and Mozilla
--
It's about time BT tried to enforce this patent. This is good news. Prodigy is a big company that can afford the legal resources to defend itself against this ridiculously absurd patent.
I expect that it'll be an easy case for Prodigy. And once Prodigy wins, the patent will be null and void. This is good for all of us, because it means that we can all go on our merry way developing and using web products. If BT had selected first target that didn't have the bucks to hire good lawyers, the case might have gone the other way.
Worst-case scenario? BT wins, Microsoft goes to BT for an exclusive license to their innovative hyperlinking technology, and all other developers effectively become legally barred from writing or publishing web software. (Ok, it's a stretch, but worst-case scenarios usually are.)
--
It seems that every company that owns WordPerfect seems to tank. It's like Tolkien's Ring or something. First the WordPerfect Corporation itself, then Novell, now Corel.
... we might consider both WordPerfect and Corel to be simply the next fatality, the next commercial entity to get squashed by free software that is Just Better.
Here's the sad story of a great application that suffered from a long string of bad management, unfair beatings from a big bad monopolist, and finally... competition from free software.
WordPerfect gives many of us a Warm Fuzzy. It's part of our collective history. But now we've got both StarOffice and KOffice for free, and open source
Mark Williams software (remember Coherent?) was the first. Microsoft will likely be the last. There's plenty of 'em in between -- WordPerfect is merely one of them.
--
While I personally wouldn't touch a Microsoft-powered device with a ten foot pole, the one thing that I've noticed their users enjoy is multimedia support. People want to use their pocket computers to play MP3's, and even take dictation. This is something Palm OS needs in order to maintain its lead.
--
IBM's virtual environment (VM-ESA) works without the aid of a "host operating system." In other words, if you want to load (for example) Linux/390 into one of your VM's, you don't have to have the VM running inside OS/390 (the operating system formerly known as MVS). The whole mainframe is virtualized by VM-ESA before you start getting into operating systems at all.
What would be involved in making something like this run on the x86 environment? Could, for example, a thin VM management layer run on the bottom, with Linux and Windows running in parallel, instead of one on top of the other as both plex86 and VMware do?
Or is the PC so badly designed that there's no hope of doing VM's without a host OS?
--
It's about migration, pure and simple. Windows 3.1 ran DOS apps. Windows 95 ran Windows 3.1 apps. Windows NT runs all of them. Naturally, people aren't going to hold on to their old apps forever, but the option to run them has to be there. I'd wager a guess that when the WINE project gets to the point where it can reliably run Win32 software at least as reliably as OS/2 ran Win16 software, without the need to install Microsoft DLL's, you'll start to see a shift. And why not? With a price tag of $0.00, it's attractive to both OEM's and large corporate installations. Out-of-the-box working Windows emulation is what's necessary to begin the mass migration. Once that starts to happen in significant numbers, there won't be a single ISV foolish enough to remain only on Win32 and not produce Linux native versions of their apps. Slowly and steadily, Linux becomes the native environment for all apps.
--
The public switched telephone network could benefit from variable-length dialing. Dial as much as you need to make the number unique; the rest should be considered "identical to your number."
You'd probably have to terminate all dialing with the # key or something to make it work. This would render rotary phones unusable, but how much longer can we really afford to keep supporting these relics?
--
As someone else here said, there's an important difference between "revolutionary" and "visionary." You might call RMS the visionary and Linus the revolutionary. Linus didn't start out with the goal of writing a world-class operating system for the masses -- it was just a neat hack at the beginning. Stallman had that idea, though. The difference is that Linus went out and did what Stallman only talked about. As such, there is room in the world for both visionaries andrevolutionaries -- in fact, they're both necessary, and they have a symbiotic relationship.
--
Right now, it's a rather awkward time to have a Motif-based app. The Linux desktop is, by and large, GTK and Qt based, and the biggest commercial apps for both Linux and Unix have either moved to one of the better toolkits (Netscape) or are in the process of going there (StarOffice). Even the venerable WordPerfect has switched from Motif to Winelib.
Motif apps are looking increasingly quaint and outmoded, and it wouldn't be terribly easy to move FrameMaker to a new toolkit. Adobe is one of the few software powerhouses that still has high-profile Motif apps out there. They're at a crossroads and they need to make some decisions. Abandon the Linux port of FrameMaker? Ok, but what about the Sun, HP, and IBM versions? They're still on Motif, even at a time when those vendors are moving to GNOME/GTK.
Adobe needs to either get up to speed with the new Linux/Unix desktop, or get out of the market.
--
One problem with Microsoft is that they have enough well-paid corporate lawyers, and a big enough war chest, that they really do believe that they're invincible. They'll take GPL code if they want, and worry about the legal issues later.
No court would force Microsoft to open-source a GPL-tainted Windows, especially a conservative Supreme Court full of Bush nominees. They'd be much more likely to declare the GPL non-enforceable and declare code covered by it to be the legal equivalent of Public Domain. It's the Golden Rule, folks: whoever has the gold, makes the rules. Welcome to the Corporate Republic.
Now, do I think they've actually stolen any code? Of course not. Anyone who's written code for both Unix and Windows, and especially anyone who's had the unfortunate experience of having to port code from one to the other, knows that the architectures of these two systems are way too different for ported code to run efficiently. It's hard enough making ported code run at all.
--